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Submitter: Jim Pine
Community: Victoria, B.C.
Date Submitted: August 25, 2010
Summary:
Any examination of salmon stocks on the West Coast must include a serious examination of the wisdom of industrial salmon feedlots and their deleterious impacts on migratory salmon, including disease and parasite transmission.
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Submission:
Dear Commissioner,
Any time we have tried to push Nature into what she normally does not do, we pay a high price. Last year's complete collapse of the sockeye run is a case in point, this year's run notwithstanding.
Salmon feedlots, benignly referred to as fish farms by the industry, play a significant role in upsetting the delicate balance of Nature. Salmon were not meant to be penned in cages, fed antibiotics and the carotenoid Astaxanthin (the synthetic variety is produced from petroleum by-products via a complex chemical process)to create the vivid pink color of the feedlot salmon. You know that and every other thinking person knows that. We risk upsetting the natural balance of our wild stocks by introducing disease and parasites, to say nothing of the horrible life that a salmon must have to endure. Imagine if you were a salmon that typically would travel thousands of kms in the wild over your life cycle and had to spend your life thrashing about in a small cage.
These salmon feedlots are like boils on Mother Earth that will eventually weaken her immune system. Any examination of salmon stocks on the West Coast must include a serious examination of the wisdom of industrial salmon feedlots and their deleterious impacts on migratory salmon.
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